Google Says It Has the Right to Notify Publishers of ‘Forgotten’ Requests

Google says it has the right to notify publishers of “right to be forgotten” requests.

Reuters

Following the “right to be forgotten,” Google Inc. is fighting for the right to notify.

Facing mounting outcry from European Union privacy regulators over how it is is implementing the bloc’s new “right to be forgotten,” the search giant has gone public to defend its practice of telling websites when some of their content has been removed from some Google searches—arguing such flagging is essential to maintaining a fair balance in the new right.

The company on Thursday published the full list of responses it has sent to a list of questions the regulators gave Google at a meeting last week, demanding that it explain its implementation of the surprise May ruling that gives individuals the right to request the removal of information about them from search results, but also requires that search engines balance those requests against a public interest.

Perhaps the most pointed of the regulators’ questions asked search engines what “legal basis” they might have to make such notifications, which some regulators argue undermine the purpose of the ruling by at times leading to the identification of people who made removal requests.

Google’s legal argument in today’s answers is, first, that it needs no legal basis under EU privacy law, because sharing the link that has been removed does not include any personal data. But the company then goes on to make a more substantive case: Only by informing publishers of removals can it receive complaints that may expose an illegitimate “right to be forgotten” request it has erroneously granted.

The notice to webmasters both ensures transparency and makes corrections possible when a removal proves to be a mistake. We have received information from webmasters that has caused us to reevaluate removals and reinstate search results. Such feedback from webmasters enables us to conduct a more balanced weighing of rights, thereby improving our decision-making process and the outcome for search users and webmasters.

The company goes on to argue that it expects to receive many requests that are inappropriate, making notifications and a process to ensure appeals that much more important in its view.

Historically, we have seen see many cases of business competitors trying to abuse removals processes to reduce each others’ web presence, so this corrective is important. Abuse of such processes is a well-documented phenomenon — one academic study based on Google’s published information about copyright-based removals estimated that over 50% of removal requests originated with competitors targeting each others’ sites for removal from search results.